After playing around with Chrome extensions for a bit, I came up with a really fun idea that I simply don't know how to implement.
What if we had a Chrome Steem game extension? It would become a new way to connect with people who are on Steemit, potentially providing an additional social dynamic, in the process.
Let's start with something basic, like pong:
As you can see, the pop-out can open/close at any time, making it a convenient "add-on" to your Steemit experience. I imagine players entering a cue, with the winner retaining a place in the game after each contest. There'd be a 15 second countdown for the person in cue and the winner to join the next game, where they'd both get a notification, in case they left the pop-out.
Anyone and everyone would be able to watch the game in real time. The cue list would move relatively quickly as each side would only get 3 "lives" per game.
In essence, it's a community "game-board" where anyone could come and hang out for a bit to see who's playing what. We could have all sorts of games on there, and just like on my Steem Highway extension, you would just click a button to bring you to each one.
As far as sign-up/log-in, I'd like to find a way to safely integrate our Steemit posting keys. I'm not sure how practical that is, but it seems to me to be the key to making this something really special. If the games get really good, it'd also provide another incentive for outsiders to join Steemit, if they want to play. Basically, it just helps to strong-arm adoption.
In game, you could click the names of players and those in the cue to read posts in between checking out the score, thus opening up more outlets for us to connect. A link could bring you to their blog, and another could bring you their steemd.
We could even run with @blakemiles84's recent idea of Steem baseball cards and bring you to a stats page within the pop-out when you click a player's name. Instead of Steemit stats, it would display the stats of your performance in the games. Your Steem robot could be inserted in the profile, very easily, as @future24 showed us, taking away some of the potential complexities involved in account customization.
I could see us starting with games like pong, chess, etc, and then maybe growing it into a much bigger platform. We could even one day introduce Steem rewards, either through donations, or through an account here that accumulates them solely for the project. I'd assume with some early success, the account would earn a decent amount each week posting about high scores, top performers, etc. They'd also be able to earn curation rewards through a bot if necessary. This would provide Steem-flow for all the games.
For example, I could see a Minecraft mod with Steem blocks mixed through the shared world. Every week they'd be refreshed to give players a reason to keep coming back. If rewards aren't mined fast enough, they'd be diverted to another game that's played by more users.
This enhances the overall idea by providing a (small) financial incentive to draw more people to our platform through an indirect, non-blogging way.
I'm not entirely sure if all of this is possible, but from what I've figured out just in the past couple days, this doesn't seem like something that would be impossible. Maybe it would simply be easier to set-up a Steem-Games site, but I think the draw to the extension is the fact that you would never need to leave Steemit to play.
Let me know what you think!
